Get your Sleep

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Winnow
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Get your Sleep

Post by Winnow »

http://duggmirror.com/health/The_Threat ... l_with_it/

There are some good tips in this article.

All of this talk about energy drinks is bullshit. You need sleep!
Discover The Threats Of Bad Sleeping Habits and Deal With Them for Quality Sleep!

You have to pay high price if you are not getting enough sleep. Sleep greatly affects on your overall performance, health, and safety.

There are so many causes behind sleep deprivation. They can be the stress in your daily life, your mental health and medical conditions.

When you are sleep deprived, the first effects you feel are sleep hallucinations and mood swings.

Your nervous system will be affected due to lack of sleep and finally you feel drowsy and unable to concentrate on daytime activities.

Once you feel drowsiness and lack of concentration, you must be aware that you are sleep deprived. You need to recognize that, sleep disorders are the main causes of sleep deprivation. You cannot feel refreshed and you feel sleepy throughout the day after a typical night’s sleep.

Most of you think that, it is only because of the stress during the day. You will not notice the actual thing. The unawareness of your condition can result in different conditions in your later life.

Bad sleep habits lead to stress, decreased memory and cognitive abilities:

There are many effects of not having enough sleep. They can affect every aspect of your daily life.

Decreased life quality:

You are unable to participate in definite activities that need special attention like watching your child in a play school, going to movie, watching your favorite show on TV, etc.

Decreased alertness and performance:


Not having enough sleep causes significant decrease in your alertness and performance. According to the studies, if you reduce your night time sleep by 1½ hour then it can reduce your daytime alertness by 32%.

Working injury:

Daytime sleepiness adds to more than double higher threat of sustaining working injury. So, excessive sleepiness is not good for working people.

Relational stresses:

Your sleep problems can cause difficulties for your partner and also it can result in significant problems in your relationship like, excessive moodiness, clashes, separate bedrooms, etc.

Decreased memory and cognitive abilities:

Lack of alertness and extreme daytime sleepiness can damage your memory and cognitive abilities: the ability for thinking and processing information.

Medical conditions:

Lack of sleep can result in several serious medical conditions such as:

1. Attention deficit disorder
2. Accidental injuries
3. Diabetes
4. Distraction of bed partner’s sleep quality
5. Fetal and infancy development retardation
6. Heart attack
7. Heart failure
8. High blood pressure
9. Mental destructions
10. Over weight
11. Psychiatric disorders like mood and depression disorders
12. Stroke

For these reasons, learning good sleep habits is essential. There are many benefits associated with good sleep habits: improved health condition, improved mood, and full alertness.

So, to get these benefits, you need to learn some new techniques and definitely you should practice them. Especially the patient with narcolepsy should follow good sleep habits.

Bad Sleep HabitsFollow constant sleeping and get up timings:

Everyone should follow constant sleep timings, mainly get-up time.

While following regular naptime schedule, human brain automatically sends an indicator to the body to relax and to go to sleep and to get-up after having enough sleep.

Maintain routine schedule:

As you follow the constant sleep timings, in the same way you need to follow routine schedule for the daily activities like: usual meal timings, taking medications at the same time of the day, etc.

Regular workout:

According to the studies, regular physical activity 4-6 hours prior to bedtime can help you to fall asleep in the night. So, keep doing the physical activities at least 20 minutes in a day.

Also, avoid doing heavy workouts closer to your bedtime. They can increase your body’s temperature and keeps you awake throughout the night.

Avoid daytime sleeps:

Daytime sleeps affect your normal sleep routine. So, you feel alert and zippy at nighttimes. Your nighttime sleep gets affected with those short power sleeps.

Arranging quality sleep environment:

The essential thing for having enough sleep is to have quality sleep environment in your bedroom. Don’t keep radio, TV, or whatever the thing that can divert you from sleeping.

Keep your bedroom cool and it must have proper ventilation. Keep your pillows and mattress clean as they always support a pleasing environment.

Use herbal pillows which are natural sleep aids to induce sleep and reduce anxiety. A sleep machine can be used to block out distracting noises so that you can get good night sleep.

Check out the herbal pillows: http://joyofsleep.com/

More about the sleep machine: http://www.firststreetonline.com/

Avoid taking any sleep-stealing incentive:

Don’t take any incentive like nicotine and caffeine before you are going to bed as they can disturb your sleep. Caffeine is an incentive that keeps your brain alert and nicotine is a substance that triggers your metabolism.

Also, avoid drinking alcohol, particularly when you feel sleepy. Instead of these substances, take the fluids which help you in getting sleep such as a glass of warm milk or hot chocolate.

Maintaining normal body temperature:

Take a hot water bath before going to sleep. When you get a hot water bath, your body’s temperature will increase, but when you enter into bed there is a decrease in your body’s temperature, this aids you to sleep throughout the night.

Avoid forcing yourself to sleep:

If you are not getting sleep, avoid forcing yourself to sleep by resting on the bed. If you are not getting sleep within 15-20 minutes then get out of the bed, leave that room and keep doing any sedentary task until you feel sleepy. Follow relaxing pre-sleep habits like: Light bedtime snacks, hot bath, or ten minutes of reading.

Learn techniques for relaxation:

Try to learn relaxation exercises such as: yoga, meditation, deep breathing exercises or listen to soft music when you are trying to fall asleep.

Learn techniques of relaxation with the help of Self-Guided Sleep CD for deep and restful sleep.

For Self-Guided relaxation CD, check the link below:

http://www.self-guided.com/

Get some sunlight:

Sunlight helps to regulate your circadian clock thus making you feel sleepy during night by invigorating your body to generate melatonin. So, everyday you need to expose to bright light for some time.

All most all aspects of your life are connected with sleep quality, ranging from your health condition to interacting with others. So, by following these sleep habits, you can sleep your way to more productive life.

Exposure to light is also possible with bright light therapy. In bright light therapy, a light box is used to provide artificial light.
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Winnow
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Re: Get your Sleep

Post by Winnow »

Playing certain movies can be an amazing sleep aid. If I start watching The Golden Compass, for example, I'll be out like a light within a couple minutes. So, put the TV/Video Player/PC on a 10 minute sleep timer, and then start the snoozer movie of your choice.
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Re: Get your Sleep

Post by Fash »

I have a horrible sleep pattern... I deprive myself of sleep all week, and then refuse to get out of bed on the weekends. It's not a good cycle but I don't see it changing any time soon. I'm a night owl and I take advantage of every opportunity to delay going to sleep. When I can get a beautiful girl to come over at midnight to drink wine, spend time, and enjoy the hot tub, just how important is work in the morning? At that point, it's near the bottom of my list.

The movie thing wouldn't work for me... Actually I need the sound machine to fall asleep, due to my tinnitus, as I cannot sleep in silence. If there's something like a radio or a TV playing (that isn't ambient noise like the sleep machine) I will focus and listen to it and stay awake. I have to be really drunk to fall asleep when I'm not at home.
Fash

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Winnow
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Re: Get your Sleep

Post by Winnow »

Fash wrote:When I can get a beautiful girl to come over at midnight to drink wine, spend time, and enjoy the hot tub, just how important is work in the morning? At that point, it's near the bottom of my list.
That works for one night. If you're lucky enough to have that girl over the next night, the experience isn't going to be as good due to lack of sleep. I'm not saying you won't have a good time but it most certainly won't be 100% of what if could be.

For this reason, whenever I had a choice of going out Friday night or Saturday night, I'd pick Saturday. Work (doing nothing is tiring) wears me out so going out right after work on a Friday isn't as fulfilling as getting a good night's sleep, sleeping in on Saturday, and then partying all night Saturday/Sunday morning.

Before people start chiming in that they can party all night, every night...I know...so can I, and did in college, but if you're not getting adequate sleep, even your "fun" time isn't going to be optimal.

I'm undecided on how effective napping at work is. I nap 15 minutes in the morning, usually 30 minutes at lunch, and 15 minutes in the afternoon. On top of that, I'll nap in my office as much as possible until someone disturbs me. All of this napping is trying to make up for getting an average of four hours of sleep each night during the week. The result of this sleeping pattern usually ends up with me going to sleep around 5-6am on Saturday morning and waking up around 3-4pm Saturday afternoon, and then staying up again until 6am Sunday morning, sleeping until 11am (football!). It's pretty fucked up, but until I can sleep my natural biological clock hours from 6am-1pm, I need to be creative in where I get my sleep.
Fash wrote:The movie thing wouldn't work for me... Actually I need the sound machine to fall asleep, due to my tinnitus, as I cannot sleep in silence. If there's something like a radio or a TV playing (that isn't ambient noise like the sleep machine) I will focus and listen to it and stay awake. I have to be really drunk to fall asleep when I'm not at home.
I watch divx movies or TV shows in bed so those will end at some point if I fall asleep (not like a TV w/audio disturbing you all night long).

I have to have a fan on at night to sleep. I can't sleep in silence and have the occasional ringing in the ears like you. I have an excellent rain CD, "A Day on Cape Cod" which is 30 minutes of excellent rain sound with no thunder and varies from light to medium rainfall. I like to put that on loop and sleep to it sometimes as well.

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Re: Get your Sleep

Post by Noysyrump »

I also need some sound, usually a fan. Its been freezin the past couple weeks but i still have that fan blowing...

One noise machine I did enjoy using... Playing Civ4 if you zoom in on an ocean square the wave noises are excelent. Jungle noise is also nice but not like the waves.... ahhh video games, so many uses.
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Re: Get your Sleep

Post by Boogahz »

I keep reading the title of this thread as: Get your Sheep


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Re: Get your Sleep

Post by Fairweather Pure »

Winnow wrote:Playing certain movies can be an amazing sleep aid. If I start watching The Golden Compass, for example, I'll be out like a light within a couple minutes. So, put the TV/Video Player/PC on a 10 minute sleep timer, and then start the snoozer movie of your choice.
Simpsons on DVD does it for me. I have no need to watch the entire thing since I've seen them all so much. If I watch anything new, I'll feel compelled to stay up and complete it no matter how tired I am.
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Re: Get your Sleep

Post by Neziroth »

Before people start chiming in that they can party all night, every night...I know...so can I, and did in college, but if you're not getting adequate sleep, even your "fun" time isn't going to be optimal.
I was going to post a question along these lines a day or so ago and never got around to it.

This article says avoid daytime sleeping all together because it messes up your sleep cycle... but what if daytime sleeping is a part of your sleep cycle?

3 out of 5 days of my work week go like this:

Wake up 5:30am, morning routine, at work by 6:30 am.
6:30 - 3:30 or 4pm is work, usually not much of a break (eat on the run sort of thing) and it's pretty physical work.
4:30 pm I get home, eat something quick, shower and crash for a nap around 5pm. It's a big nap, usually til 8 or 9 at which point I get up and go out with friends who keep the same schedule as me. We stay out til maybe 2am, get home, crash another 3 hours and go back to work.

How bad is this for me? I'm still getting 6.5 - 7 hours per 24 hour period, just not all at once, and I'm getting to the point where if I sleep 8 full hours I feel like shit and don't want to get out of bed in the morning. After the two ~3 hour naps I usually pop out of bed pretty easily and am fully awake and alert after a shower.

The weekends are a different story, after a late friday night I just stay in bed until 11 or so. I figure I'll pull this off while I'm still young and single with no kids or responsibilities besides being on time to work and paying ze bills.

To summarize my question: Is it possible to train your body to function on less sleep? It feels like that's what I've done. It's sort of like that sleep diet where you take 20 minute naps every 4 hours, or whatever it was... just not as severe as that.
<a href="http://www.fictionpress.com/~mjlb">See the other side...</a>

Feel free to share your thoughts~
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Winnow
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Re: Get your Sleep

Post by Winnow »

I'm the wrong person to be asking for sleep advice. It's 8:45am and I still haven't gone to sleep. I woke up at 5:30pm yesterday.

According to various articles I've read, the sleep cycle is important (REM stage, etc). Any amount of sleep is good for you but according to this, you can get at least one full cycle within 2 hours:

Image

That came from a Canadian site:

http://www.tc.gc.ca/TDC/publication/tp13959e/13959e.htm

Fatigue Management Guide for Canadian Pilots

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I fell asleep at my PC writing this. Heading to bed ~9:20am (so there's a 30 minute "chair nap" that counts a little toward overall sleep for the day) The word, "Canada" appears to trigger sleepiness.
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Re: Get your Sleep

Post by Zver »

If anyone in New York area has trouble with sleep apnea, give me a call, I can help.

http://www.superiorsleepservices.com/index.html
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